When Nirvana came to Houston for the last time

Kurt Cobain and Nirvana were last in Houston on Monday, Dec. 6, 1993, at the AstroArena. Five months later the band was done, with Cobain dead from a self-inflicted shotgun wound at 27. He left behind a handful of studio albums, a trove of live material, a widow in Courtney Love, and a young daughter, Frances Bean.

In the band’s wake would come thousands of acts taking cues from the Seattle trio, for better or worse. Mostly worse.

In the last few weeks leading up to the 20th anniversary of Cobain’s suicide, the Seattle Police Department has been releasing extra photos from the scene, including pictures of his shoes, hands, and personal items he had by his side before firing a shotgun at his head. Police have declined to release further gruesome photos of Cobain, saying that that it wouldn’t do anyone any good to see Cobain in such a traumatic state.

The Nirvana bill at the AstroArena featured the Breeders and Shonen Knife as support. The Nirvana lineup that night was bolstered by Pat Smear on guitar and touring cellist Lori Goldston. Drummer Dave Grohl would snare Smear for his post-Nirvana project, Foo Fighters, which some would argue long ago eclipsed Nirvana.

Nirvana had played Houston twice before, in 1989 and 1991, touring the Bleach and Nevermind albums respectively. Every Houstonian of a certain age claims to have seen one or all three of the shows. They played long-shuttered venues the Axiom and the Vatican, which now only exist largely as memories and shells of their former selves. It’s hard to imagine a band of this caliber playing in a Houston venue that small in 2014. Surely Nirvana’s next stop would have been The Summit (gasp), or the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in the Woodlands. Since then, the bands surviving colleagues — Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Pixies — have all graced the biggest spaces in the area.

The Houston Press’ Brad Tyer wrote a somewhat scathing review of the show, bemoaning the crowd and the venue’s sound, and the cramped quarters on the general admission floor for the 80 minutes Nirvana was onstage. Likewise Houston Chronicle music writer Marty Racine wrote that some in the crowd looked bored, occasionally hurling insults at the band, and that the band’s limitations were evident that night. Security was tight and ready to quell any signs of a riot, which was not to be.

“Nirvana, which once smelled like teen spirit at the top of the charts, was revealed as just another rock band,” Racine wrote. Younger fans though, at least the ones I spoke with this week, had their long-haired minds blown. This was the band’s set list the night before in Dallas. Accurate set lists from the Houston set are hard to find, but by all accounts they played all of “the hits.”

Local musician Jon Patrick, now in his mid-30s, was at the AstroArena show. He was just 13 at the time.

“I remember Kurt’s high scream sounding like a chipmunk the whole time, it cut through the mix like a knife.” He remembers his parents weren’t too thrilled with the new Nirvana shirt he bought at the show, or his late arrival back home.

“I got home way late and my parents lost their minds especially when they saw my new shirt I was wearing,” Patrick says. The mosh pit, he says, was almost non-stop.

During the band’s encore, Cobain asked in a Texas drawl, “So, ya’ll enjoying your new Pearl Jam record?” alluding to the other Seattle band’s recent album Vs., which arrived in stores two months earlier.

His friend Justin was there too but they wouldn’t know each other for almost another decade. This was his first rock concert, he says, and the first of many of his friends and defined the future of many of the youngsters there.